Biography
In her public service, Araceli Campos is Chair of the LA County Women & Girls Initiative (WGI) Governing Council. WGI is a 5-year, $5 million task force launched to provide gender equity recommendations across LA County services, employment, and partnerships. Araceli was part of the working group that led to the creation of the WGI under Board Chair Sheila Kuehl and Supervisor Hilda Solis. After establishment of the WGI, she was appointed to the WGI Governing Council by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, and elected Chair by her peers. This initiative will affect LA County’s services to over 10 million residents and over 100,000 employees.
Araceli’s work for the WGI was informed by her 5 years as President of the LA City Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the youngest in its history. In this role, Araceli supported Mayor Eric Garcetti’s first-of-its-kind gender study and historic implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in LA City. Successes include the highest percentage of female appointees of any major U.S. City, and the elimination of all-male commissions for the first time in LA City history. This work catalyzed gender equity initiatives within government in other cities and counties throughout the United States.
Professionally, Araceli is Executive Director of the Miguel Contreras Foundation (MCF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit partner of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (LA Fed). The LA Fed represents over 300 unions with 800,000 workers in Los Angeles County. MCF provides economic opportunity programs for underserved workers outside of organized labor in Los Angeles County, focusing on people of color and immigrants, the formerly incarcerated, and women. MCF seeks to partner with labor and business to create pipelines and placements for underserved workers in quality careers where workers have equitable wages and benefits, fair treatment, and a collective voice in their economic destiny.
Araceli is a first-generation American, with family from rural Mexico and Cuba. A first-generation middle school, high school, college, and law school graduate, she attended Los Angeles public schools before moving to the East Coast for college. At Yale, Araceli co-founded the major Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and was one of the first four graduates in the program. Araceli went on to graduate from Stanford Law School, where she co-founded the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights/Civil Liberties.
